Google tells parliament it disabled 600,000 child abuse accounts

Paul Karp
The parliamentary joint committee, law enforcement is meeting this morning to hear from Google and Twitter about child exploitation material.
This could get interesting particularly because Twitter has come under fire from the eSafety Commissioner for failing to deal with hate speech on the platform, and there are concerns that standards are slipping on other illegal material.
But first up, Google.
Lucinda Longcroft, the director of government affairs and public policy for Australia and New Zealand, gave an opening statement:
Child sexual abuse material has no place on our platforms. As an industry leader in fighting CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), our approaches to develop, and share technology to detect this content of scale to report, child sexual abuse material and our platforms; and deter predatory behaviors on our platforms, that put our children at leas; and work across industry and with NGOs to support the development of new data-driven, tools to boost technical capacity and raise awareness.
First, we can identify report and remove CSAM at scale across our platforms because of the investment we’ve made in developing, and deploying cutting edge technologies, including technology to scan and identify potential CSAM in uploaded videos … We recognise that protecting children from abuse is a mission that no one company, industry or part of society can accomplish alone [so] we share that technology with eligible partners free of charge.
Second, we report all instances of CSAM on our platforms to the US-based national center for missing and exploited children … which in turn sends reports to law enforcement authorities around the world, including to the Australian Federal Police. In 2022 across our platforms, we made more than two million reports to network.
And we’ve disabled over 600 thousand accounts for possessing CSAM. We also send supplemental high priority cyber tip reports on the abuse of children or production of CSAM … and our team follows up with your enforcement to make sure that they’re aware of these reports.
Longcroft said that Google also: de-indexes searches that might lead to CSAM, displays warnings that it is illegal, and provides avenues to report it.
On action in Australia, she said:
Google received more than six thousand data access requests directly from Australian law enforcement agencies in 2022. We received 62 requests under our emergency disclosure policy, which facilitates access to account data in urgent circumstances where life is a risk. We stock this service 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
Key events
The parliament sitting has begun and over in the senate, UAP senator Ralph Babet is trying to get his private members bill – ‘Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023’ passed.
The explanatory memo explains:
This Bill seeks to prevent the granting of future indemnities by the Commonwealth in relation to the use of vaccines. This Bill will limit financial and legal risk to the Commonwealth so that risk remains with pharmaceutical companies.
This is a continuation of the UAP’s push against the pandemic measures.
There is no way this bill would pass the Labor controlled house, so it won’t go anywhere.
At the end of that interview, Katy Gallagher was asked about what the federal government is doing on housing and said:
We all acknowledge that pressure in the housing market is there particularly at the social and affordable end and that part of the solution is is generating and investing in that supply.
But the other side is dealing with some of the barriers that are holding back. You know, the supply that supply being able to be constructed.
So it’s a genuine cross government issue in this federation, one arm of government can’t solve it.
We can put all the money on the table tomorrow, and we’ve still got issues that we need to solve at the state and territory and local government level and that’s what the work the Prime Minister is leading.
National cabinet meets next Wednesday in Brisbane ahead of the Labor conference, where housing is the number one agenda item. That is because of the Greens push for renters rights, including rent freezes and rent caps (there is also the super profits tax idea, which is where the government set up a windfall tax that is reinvested into housing) as part of its negotiations on the housing Australia future fund. The government has said no to that, but it is looking at uniform guidelines the state and territories would follow to improve the rental market, for renters.
Katy Gallagher says she hopes the parliament will progress the legislation pretty quickly because there is support across the parliament for the changes.
But there is more work to be done before the second tranche of legislation is progressed.
Priority is parliament HR before establishing an independent commission, Katy Gallagher says
Katy Gallagher spoke a little about the Set the Standard legislation on ABC radio RN Breakfast this morning.
This first bill will set up the parliament HR (essentially) – the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service –which will be independent to government.
There has been an interim body in place, but this is the permanent body.
So how would it work?
Gallagher said:
Under the new model it’ll be created as an independent authority. It will have more ability including additional resourcing which we put in the last budget to provide those services.
However, I should say that the next piece of work that we’ve got to do is what’s going to be called the IPSC which is the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission, which is going to be the permanent and ongoing body that will look at investigations and sanctions about complaints.
The PWSS doesn’t have that role yet.
It will it will do investigations and complaints handling for the interim and then once the IPSC is in place, that will be the body that does the investigations, that function with the ability to enforce sanctions.
Set the Standard report: government to introduce independent parliament support service
The government will introduce the first major legislation in response to the Kate Jenkins’ Set the Standard report, which will establish an independent Parliamentary Workplace Support Service – almost like a HR for parliament staffers.
One of the major issues to come out of the Set the Standard report was ministerial staff did not have anywhere to go if there was a workplace issue. They could be hired and fired by their minister with almost no recourse, which meant that many said they felt pressured to put up with behaviour which would be unacceptable in most other Australian workplaces.
Katy Gallagher and Don Farrell have announced the first tranche of legislation to make some of the recommendations Jenkins made come to fruition and first up is the PWSS being set up as an independent statutory agency.
The PWSS will be an independent statutory agency that will deliver:
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Professional development and training for staff;
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Support and resources to professionalise management practices in offices;
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Access to coaching and early intervention supports including policy, process, and guidance to manage suspension and termination decisions; and
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Training and guidance for the implementation of the Code of Conduct and behavioural standards.

Coalition argue migration rates are behind housing crisis
The Coalition have pursued Labor over those figures, despite the numbers being lower than what was forecast when the Coalition was in power, and due to the re-opening of the borders after the pandemic closures.
It has been one of those issues which has been simmering along under the surface after a big public push in media and question times.
James Paterson was asked about the BCA’s view while on Sky and the Coalition senator was critical of the business lobby – a strange sentence to type.
I’m very supportive of migration to Australia which helped build this country, but the pace and the rate of that migration is absolutely a legitimate issue for public debate and the impact that has on services into our community is also very legitimate, particularly housing. Frankly, I thought this was a particularly tone deaf contribution from the business community today, suggesting that the only numbers that matter were the permanent migration program and not the temporary workers, students who are coming here right now.
Because we know they are coming in extraordinary numbers and by the end of this year, I’ve been told by people in the industry it’s going to be eye wateringly high numbers, perhaps the largest ever on record.
So, for the business community to just dismiss the impacts of that on people’s rent, on people’s mortgages, on their ability to get in the housing market is dangerously out of touch for them. And I think they have to recognise that we are not providing enough housing to Australians, and we need to get on with that task if we want to make sure we can welcome migrants.

Business Council of Australia calls for migration reforms
The Business Council of Australia have released a new research paper this morning with the title ‘migration makes Australia stronger’ where it makes the case that poor policy, not migration is to blame for the housing crisis, while calling for the migration system to be reformed.
In releasing the report, CEO Jennifer Westacott said:
If we want to continue to be competitive in attracting global talent, our migration system needs to be reformed.
Australia is competing against other countries for the best and brightest; and slow or complex migration systems, which do not provide appropriate levels of certainty for someone looking to uproot their lives to move internationally, puts us at a serious disadvantage.
Westacott and the BCA also pushed back against the ‘big Australia’ scare campaigns.
There is a current misconception that our migration figures are higher than normal.
It is important to recognise migration numbers currently recorded simply reflect a rebalancing after the pandemic border closures in 2020 and 2021.
Our population is actually expected to be smaller than previously forecast irrespective of the current catch-up period of migration.
Prescription changes could hurt rural and regional pharmacies, Liberal senator says
Liberal senator James Paterson was on Sky News this morning explaining the Coalition’s position on attempting to block the 60-dispensing prescription changes.
Paterson says the Coalition supports cheaper medicine, but wants the government to come back to the table with pharmacists:
I mean, everyone is in favour of delivering cheaper medicines to Australians. That’s something we’re very proud of that we achieved in our time in government by listing a range of new medicines on the PBS. It’s something that Labor failed to do when they were last in government. But this could have very serious unintended consequences on community pharmacies, particularly in rural and regional communities, and no one is better off if they lose their only medical care, in which it is [in] some regional communities and in some remote communities. And the government’s lack of consultation, lack of consideration for these issues is leading to really significant angst in the community and obviously particularly with community pharmacy operators.
Google tells parliament it disabled 600,000 child abuse accounts

Paul Karp
The parliamentary joint committee, law enforcement is meeting this morning to hear from Google and Twitter about child exploitation material.
This could get interesting particularly because Twitter has come under fire from the eSafety Commissioner for failing to deal with hate speech on the platform, and there are concerns that standards are slipping on other illegal material.
But first up, Google.
Lucinda Longcroft, the director of government affairs and public policy for Australia and New Zealand, gave an opening statement:
Child sexual abuse material has no place on our platforms. As an industry leader in fighting CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), our approaches to develop, and share technology to detect this content of scale to report, child sexual abuse material and our platforms; and deter predatory behaviors on our platforms, that put our children at leas; and work across industry and with NGOs to support the development of new data-driven, tools to boost technical capacity and raise awareness.
First, we can identify report and remove CSAM at scale across our platforms because of the investment we’ve made in developing, and deploying cutting edge technologies, including technology to scan and identify potential CSAM in uploaded videos … We recognise that protecting children from abuse is a mission that no one company, industry or part of society can accomplish alone [so] we share that technology with eligible partners free of charge.
Second, we report all instances of CSAM on our platforms to the US-based national center for missing and exploited children … which in turn sends reports to law enforcement authorities around the world, including to the Australian Federal Police. In 2022 across our platforms, we made more than two million reports to network.
And we’ve disabled over 600 thousand accounts for possessing CSAM. We also send supplemental high priority cyber tip reports on the abuse of children or production of CSAM … and our team follows up with your enforcement to make sure that they’re aware of these reports.
Longcroft said that Google also: de-indexes searches that might lead to CSAM, displays warnings that it is illegal, and provides avenues to report it.
On action in Australia, she said:
Google received more than six thousand data access requests directly from Australian law enforcement agencies in 2022. We received 62 requests under our emergency disclosure policy, which facilitates access to account data in urgent circumstances where life is a risk. We stock this service 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
Battle against soft drink flavoured alcohol isn’t a new one
When I was in high school, the big drink furore was over soft drink flavoured alcoholic drinks, alcoholic ‘pops’ which included ice blocks and sickly sweet pre-packaged ‘shots’ of alcohol which could be hidden from bag searches (or so I heard).
It is not a new battle, is what I am saying. There is a reason things like Passion Pop are still for sale in liquor stores. The pattern seems to be the same – an outcry, a push back and a simmer down again.
Closing advertising loopholes, given that most young people do not consume their media in the same way as their parents, let alone when the advertising codes were put in place is one thing and probably the battle worth focussing on.
Focussing on one product doesn’t usually lead to a change.
Teals push for stricter alcohol regulations as Asahi’s Hard Solo launches
The teals push to have stricter regulation around the marketing of things like alcohol (as well as junk food and gambling) is not new – it has been one of the issues the crossbench, and independent senator David Pocock have been pushing since April/May.
The main thrust of the campaign is to have the government close the advertising loopholes that let companies “saturate broadcast and social media with harmful product marketing”.
Groups like Fare (Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education) are in support of the mission, which it says is crucial given how companies use data.
In May, Fare CEO Caterina Giorgi said:
By the time a child reaches 13 years of age, 72 million data points will have been collected on them – and this is used to build a profile of them so that marketing can be used to most effectively target them.
Alcohol and gambling companies are using this data to track, trace and target our children with marketing online.
This is an alarming statistic. When it comes to addictive products like alcohol and gambling this targeted marketing causes significant harm.
Today’s push comes after the approval of Hard Solo (an alcoholic version of the soft drink Solo, which I only vaguely remember because of some guy in a kayak) which North Sydney MP Kylea Tink has told the SMH is a step too far. Tink told the paper:
For a company like [Japanese brewer] Asahi to come out and say there’s no problem with that product to me indicates there’s a clear breakdown in between community expectation and corporate expectation.
Questions have to be asked of both the company and the [Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code panel] … that product did not pass the pub test.
Asahi has said that most drinkers of Solo are adults and “strongly refute any claims that Hard Solo can be confused with regular Solo”.
Senate ‘has a choice’ to deliver cheap medicines to 6 million Australians, Butler says
Mark Butler says he is speaking to senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell about the importance of the policy for patients (the Greens have already said they won’t support the Coalition’s motion).
This is a critically important cost-of-living measure for 6 million Australians whose medicine bills will halve if this measure is supported by the Senate.
But it’s also good for their health. We know that 60-day prescriptions, which are very common around the world for ongoing chronic health conditions, improve medication compliance. It also has the ability to free up millions of GP consults, which we know are desperately needed out in their community.
And that’s why this measure is supported by every patient group and every doctors’ group. But it has been opposed by the powerful pharmacy lobby now for five years when it was first recommended by the medicines experts who manage our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The former government ignored the recommendation and as a result, those 6 million patients have paid literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in fees they shouldn’t have had to pay.
The Senate has a choice this morning: they can put that to an end – that delay, that blocking to an end – and they can deliver cheaper medicines to 6 million Australians, which will be really good for the health system as well.

Health minister on Coalition’s attempts to block two-for-one script changes
Health minister Mark Butler was up bright and early on the Seven Network to talk the two-for-one script changes, which the Coalition are trying to block with a disallowance motion.
That’s because the Pharmacy Guild have been running a very strong campaign against the changes. Why? Because pharmacists stand to lose up to $150,000 or so in dispensing fees over the mid-term life of the policy change. The government has said it will take the $1.2bn it is estimated to save with the policy over the forwards and reinvest it back into community pharmacies, and have brought forward the next community pharmacy agreement negotiations by a year (that is where the details of how much pharmacists will receive for dispensing medicines, giving flu shots etc is nutted out).
But the Guild and its members are upset not just because of the lost dispensing fees, but also because of the incidentals (like jelly beans, I imagine) people buy when they are filling their scripts. And if chronic patients are coming in half as often, then that is a lot less jelly beans being sold on top of the prescription.
Not politics, but politics adjacent – the ABC shut down almost all its X (formerly twitter) pages yesterday, as Amanda Meade reported:
Musk has responded:
Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media.
The Australian public does not.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2023
There is a difference between censorship and abuse, but apparently not in Musk’s world.
Good morning
Welcome to parliament Friday (the last day of the parliament sitting) where this strange sitting fortnight will come to an end (until 4 September).
The health minister, Mark Butler, is on a ‘can you believe these guys’ tour about the Coalition’s attempts to disallow the two-for-one prescription change for about 300 or so chronic medications. The Coalition attempted to get support in the Senate to kill the government’s plan, following intense lobbying from the Pharmaceutical Guild, but didn’t find the numbers it was looking for.
So the change goes ahead, with the first stage to begin in September, and Butler is taking all the opportunities to criticise the opposition for standing against a policy which will save patients money.
In other health news, teal independents are turning their attention to alcohol companies and why there is an increasing number of products which appear as though they are being marketed to underage drinkers.
It’s not a new problem – sweet, colourful drinks that don’t particularly taste alcoholic and are available in bright bottles and cans that resemble soft drink have been available for decades. But with ‘hard’ versions of soft drink –like Solo – becoming available in Australia, North Sydney MP Kylea Tink and her crossbench colleagues are pushing for tighter regulation. Representatives from the alcohol industry are in town today to meet with the teals to discuss that push (which means it must be gaining traction). That comes on top of the teals push to stop gambling and alcohol ads during sports games. (I don’t actually know anyone under the age of 38 who drinks Solo, but I think it is the principle of the thing).
It is a busy day for the teals, who, along with David Pocock will also be pushing for the release of the Office of National Intelligence’s Climate Risk Assessment Report, which the government is declining to release because of national security reasons.
And they will also be pushing along calls for ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle’s prosecution to be dropped.
So a busy day for the crossbench. What else is going on? The voice debate continues (as it will until October) although the Coalition moved on to other issues in question time yesterday. We will cover it all off as it happens, so don’t you worry about that.
You have Paul Karp, Daniel Hurst and Sarah Basford Canales in Canberra and Amy Remeikis on the blog. Mike Bowers is also in the building (huzzah).
I am on my second coffee with a third brewing – so let’s get into it.